EESI TO CEES:

FROM INITIATIVE TO CENTER  

Lakshman Guruswamy, Ph.D  

   Nicholas Doman Professor of International Environmental Law

   Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Security

  The Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI) has now become the Center for Energy and Environmental Security (CEES)—pronounced “cease.” While some have rightly acclaimed this change as a milestone, others have been puzzled, nonchalant, and indifferent to this important news.  So let me try and explain why being transformed from EESI to CEES is so central to our mission. In brief, Center status gives us greater rank and standing to propagate our ideas, attract additional funding, conduct research and teaching, involve more students, and advance our mission of finding sustainable  energy solutions to global and local energy challenges.  

CEES originally began as an exchange of ideas between Kevin Doran and myself for spreading sustainable energy solutions. We thought it was something worth pursuing, and we expanded these concepts in our first White Paper. But all new inventions and ideas—whether they take the form of new photovoltaic cells or proposals for policies and laws to advance sustainable energy—will remain academic concepts unless they become commercially or politically viable. We realized that our ideas and plans would remain cabined within academia unless they were purveyed, reviewed, discussed and adopted by city, local, state, or national governments. Promoting our ideas called for institutional or focused organizational backing, and this led to the creation of the Energy and Environmental Security Initiative (EESI). 

We began with no funds at all, and remain deeply indebted to Provost Phil DiStefano for starting us off with a small but very important seed grant, and to Regent Cindy Carlisle for her enormous help.                                                                See CEES, Page 2